Originally posted by timckelley
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Now, I'm having a hard decision. I was leaning towards a his and her TiVo to solve our problems, but it looks like upgrading is a lot cheaper.
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I'd like to save $ and do an upgrade, but I'm kind of afraid my wife could fill this up to. Before I do this, I would need a plan/agreement between my wife and I... some way for her not to infringe on my half on the TiVo space. I wonder how doable that is?

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Your wife's habits are not going to change. If she would/could, she already would have done so. Once you've upgraded your single TiVo, it just allows her to wait longer before watching her shows.

The only true solution to this is his and her TiVos. Note that once her TiVo fills up, she will want to begin using your TiVo. For peace in the family, allow her to do that, but insist that none of her shows be Keep Until I Delete. If she doesn't watch them/save them before they expire, well, she had her chance. And make sure all your shows are KUID, so that her shows don't bump your shows.

Might I highly suggest switching to DirecTV and going the DirecTiVo combo route... $5/mo service fee covers all the tivos you have. and there are no quality settings since it saves the digital bitstream verbatim from the satellite.... so if you upgrade to 100 hrs, you actually get close to 100 hours at "perfect" quality.

We've worked this out in my house. 2 adults, 1 teen, 1 pre-teen very different viewing habits.

I have a 109 hour Tivo in my office/family room that I am in charge of. No one is allowed to mess with it except me. They may watch, but they may NOT delete anything. (Cable/Sat)

We have a 101 hour Tivo in the living room that the kids can set up season passes on as well as some from husband. All 3 have complete control over this and have had to figure out common courtesys to make sure they don't step on each others toes (Cable/Sat)

We have a 40 hour ReplayTV in the bedroom that we picked up for a song and use for backup and a few of husbands shows. Husband and I are the only ones that mess with this one. (Cable Only)

Works well and most everyone is happy. The only problems we run into are the kids fighting over who has the most season passes.

I'm in agreement with pretty much everyone else here. Your wife is not going to change. One TiVo is NOT going to solve your problems, no matter HOW many hours of capacity it has. Two TiVos is the only solution. And I agree, let her record on your TiVo, with the rules being all of her shows are a lower priority than yours, none of them can be KUID, and none of them can be Keep All. Surely you see that this is the only way. How can you convince yourself that upgrading your existing TiVo will work? You freed up space on your TiVo and she saw the extra space and added more shows to her To Do List. It really is too bad you don't have DirecTiVos though. We have 6 for 4 people to use. One of them with 220 hours. At a cost of $700 total.

I totally identify with the wife. Mind you, I don't side with her, but I can identify with her. And, as someone with her precise habits, I've got to admit that it's a symptom of a deeper personality problem and could probably benefit from some help.

Maybe she would benefit from watching Oprah or Dr. Phil, if she's not really interested in tackling the problem with a professional. Actually, she's probably TiVo-ing those shows already Oprah recently did a show on de-cluttering your house (and your life), which encouraged me to rent a dumpster and do the same. It's a good feeling . . . and a small start. Use this TiVo problem to work on the larger issue. Together. When all is said and done, she'll feel better about this letting-go of this KUID craziness . . . and better about herself, too. And, with a little nudging from you to help her get started, your relationship may improve, too. I know that I'm very grateful for the push and the support that I received.

THERE WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH TIME TO WATCH EVERYTHING. I ALMOST HAD THE SAME PROBLEM TO MYSELF. I'VE DECIDED THAT it's better to live a life they catch up to tivo. So instead of watching more to catch up, I'm watching LESS.
The solution is get a life. In fact the reason she can't catch up is cause she has a life. Just tell her to forget what she's missing, cathing up on garbage is not worth missing on life. (And I mean that because you're probably seeing the good stuff and puttin off the garbage because it's not really worth watching in the first place)

Originally posted by martinp13 Get your wife her own TiVo. Seriously, that's what a lot of people have done.

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I agree with this post!

That's what I did three years ago. My wife and I watch a lot of the same things, but she still watches some stuff that I would never watch ("Sense and Sensibility," etc). Some of our suggestions combined were getting a little scary ("Kill the Monster" ) so I bought her one too.

You should never have shown here the keep until I delete choice. Most of my stuff is just recorded, and if I haven't watched it soon enough I have so much other stuff that I don't even realize it's gone. I'm upgraded to 120 hours, though. Upgrade your unit, and record everything (especially your wife's stuff, so she gets the message!!) at basic. That alone is work a few dozen extra hours, and it's really not that bad for most shows...

Any episode of a program that you miss is one in the bank - because tv is never gone for good - it'll always be repeated, and if you miss an episode of Frasier this week, when you see it in one, two or twenty years' time you'll be thrilled to have a brand new episode.

I see tv as a river, flowing continuously past, and tivo lets us slow down a particular bit of that river, where there's good fishing! But you can't stop the water flowing... try to build a dam and you'll feel the stress.

I would change everything on your tivo to keep until space needed, and let things take their natural course. And every time something has been deleted, say with a cheer: that's one in the bank!

Or if you can't countenance that, you need to get rid of the tivo, and the video. Pretend you have gambling debts and need to sell them. Otherwise the stress will kill you both - tv is important!

Originally posted by Rolnikov
Any episode of a program that you miss is one in the bank - because tv is never gone for good - it'll always be repeated, and if you miss an episode of Frasier this week, when you see it in one, two or twenty years' time you'll be thrilled to have a brand new episode.

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I look forward to the day when this is true, but for now it isn't. Shows which usually don't get repeated every few years include most sports and other live events, series so short-lived they didn't make it into syndication, and special shows like the Buffy Musical episode (which is repeated, but not in its entirety). (Also, currently most repeats of foreign-language series are on $$ channels and not subtitled.)

Anyways, back to the point of the original thread: you need a second TiVo. I myself have a 246+hr TiVo and can assure you that having a bigger TiVo will just delay problems for a while. Eventually, recording habits must change or the same old problems will recur. I myself used KUID/SUID a lot when I first upgraded my TiVo, eventually ran out of space, and was forced to change my own habits. I now KUID less than a handful of shows and manually push back the expiration dates of other important, unwatched shows every few days.

You can use KUID to your advantage. Record the show but specify only record 1 show (Default is 5), therefore if you don't watch it and delete it, it will no longer record new shows. This will be good for stopping Tivo recording those childrens program. Once you have one, it will stop recording.